Modern Scottish Collections

One of the less well-known responsibilities of Modern Scottish staff here is to acquire artist’s books for the collections. This week I had a meeting with one of the most interesting artists working in this area in Scotland today – David Faithfull . David has most recently been doing work inspired by his Scottish Book Trust visit last year to Jura where he collaborated with John Burnside. Artist’s books were also on the agenda when I joined library colleagues yesterday for SVAG : Scottish Visual Arts Group. By coincidence David Faithfull is on the teaching staff at the venue for the SVAG meeting, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Arts and Design. As part of the meeting we also went to Dundee Contemporary Arts to visit their Centre for Artists’ Books. One of my colleagues wondered if a union catalogue of artist’s books in Scotland was a possibility – it is certainly an intriguing thought. But first of all we might have to define some terms in this fascinating and diverse book/art form !

I’ve been having an email chat with Peter Arnott, the John Murray Archive Writer in Residence, re the publishing of contemporary Scottish plays. Peter and an actor friend gave a reading of his two-hander The Genesis Rock here at NLS last week. Although a prolific and award-winnging playwright – including Cyprus and <Losing Alec – only four of Peter’s plays have been published. This seems to be the situation for most contemporary Scottish playwrights. Scotland has many fine dramatists working today, but if the plays don’t get published, how many of them will be seen again after their first production ? Peter is currently working on a play for schools about Charles Darwin, based on his work here with the John Murray Archive.

Yesterday I met Cynthia Rogerson, the Director of the Arvon Foundation’s Scottish centre at Moniack Mhor, 14 miles from Inverness. As well as running the creative writing programme there (this week featuring Ali Smith) Cynthia is an acclaimed novelist. Originally from California, but a Scottish resident for 30 years, Cynthia has just completed her third novel. It is now with her agent, and she tells me that she is hoping for a bidding war !